FROM THE EDITOR: The dark side of celebrity

Sunday

Jun 24, 2007 at 12:01 AMJun 24, 2007 at 12:19 AM

New Bedford City Councilor Debora Coelho and I don't agree about much.

New Bedford City Councilor Debora Coelho and I don't agree about much.

She was the lone dissenter on the council to an ordinance allowing tattoo parlors in the city, while I believe that adults should be allowed to deface their bodies if they choose. I believe New Bedford should redevelop as many of its historic mills as it can. Mrs. Coelho grew up in the shadow of the mills and watched how hard life was on those who earned their livings within them.

"The mills were shadowy and frightening buildings that blotted out the sunlight and every possible view of a future ..." she wrote in a powerful essay The Standard-Times published Saturday.

She and I did find something to agree about last week: that what happened to Sheila Martines Pina was both sad and terrible.

Mrs. Martines Pina, formerly a local television personality and president of the Southeastern Massachusetts Convention and Visitors Bureau, was sentenced Monday to six months in jail after she pleaded guilty to three drunken driving cases.

The sentence marked the end of a long fall for Mrs. Martines Pina, the wife of former District Attorney Ronald A. Pina. For years, she has been in the news too often for the wrong reasons: usually a hard run-in with alcohol.

"She, like New Bedford itself, was faced at every turn with the easy temptations that can lead to addiction," Mrs. Coelho wrote in a letter we published last week.

Mrs. Coelho is from the Azores and she grew up admiring Mrs. Martines Pina, also of Portuguese ancestry.

And she is tired of reading the painful stories about Mrs. Martines Pina's latest legal troubles on the front page of the local newspaper.

"We as a community, and I include this newspaper, should take no pleasure in news of her personal suffering. We all can fail just as easily as she did," Mrs. Coelho wrote.

And she is right, of course. Celebrities fail as often as anyone else. But celebrity comes with its own set of rules.

Rule No. 1 is this: Everything that happens to you, good or bad, is probably news. And the bigger a celebrity you are, the bigger the story.

When you are famous and things are going well, everyone wants your autograph, wants to have their photo taken with you, is eager to buy you a drink or find ways to attach themselves to your success. But when you are a celebrity and you fail, the rules change. Then a lot of people thrill to your humiliation and relish your destruction.

Ask Paris Hilton, Don Imus, Mel Gibson or Gary Hart (who washed out of the 1988 race for president when he was spending free time with a pretty young blonde who wasn't his wife).

They can tell you what it's like when you are a celebrity and you have a drinking problem, an anger problem or a woman problem. Maybe the police cut you more slack the first time or two you cross the line, but after that, the favors stop.

So if you are Sheila Martines Pina, the system that once helped you get jobs and stay out of jail after your latest arrest ultimately turns against you and you end up facing the consequences of your actions pretty much alone. It is hoped that you face those consequences before it is too late for you to turn your life around, and before you hurt or kill yourself or someone else. What is hard is that a celebrity's failings are public, just as public as his or her triumphs.

There is only one thing I want Mrs. Coelho — and everyone else — to know about the people who work at this newspaper.

We take no pleasure in reporting about what has happened to Sheila Martines Pina or anyone else for whom drug or alcohol addiction has contributed to personal downfall. We are no more or less likely to face those problems ourselves or to have a spouse, a sibling, a parent or a child struggling with an addiction.

And we pray and hope for the healing and redemption of all those who fight addiction or who break the law — just as we pray and hope for those who are the unwilling victims of the addictions and criminal actions of others.

But when a politician, a community leader, a member of the clergy or even a newspaper editor finds himself or herself in trouble with the law, it is newsworthy — and it always will be.

That is celebrity's dark side.

Bob Unger is editor of The Standard-Times. He can be reached by e-mail at runger@s-t.com or by phone at (508) 979-4430.